


Scaling Levels

by StripySock



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/F, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:32:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1426924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eponine has all the knowhow of an experienced circuitrunner - but a future (and a body) being chipped away. Meeting Cosette, who has all the potential but has never had the chance to use it, is the start of an unlikely alliance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scaling Levels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apfelstrudelz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apfelstrudelz/gifts).



> Thanks so much to MissM for beta-reading and Pliny for cheering.

"Hold still, you little devil," her father says, and she does just that, holds steady-fast as with grimy fingers and a miniature set of magnetised screwdrivers he slips under her skin, and counts  with quick flicks of his eyes the set of data-chips embedded inside flesh that doesn't feel, numbed as it is by burnt pathways and the salve. "It's not like it's of any use to you," he mumbles as he works, the nimble fingers of a data-counterfeiter tap-tapping against the rigid plasibone.

 

She blinks away the saline that rises to her eyes and stares at the unending tumble of the world above her head, the rich tapestry of woven metal walks and dangling houses, every inch of space maximised. She's never been above fifth level and the last time she made it there, some mad siren had set off an alert, sensitive to the unwashed skin of her body, perhaps, or maybe to the out-of-date hunk of silicone and metal that is her left arm, and she'd been pitched out, head over arse, sprawling down three levels, dangling high enough above the ground that she'd swallowed sootie from the buzzers.

 

"No use," she agrees softly. When she was little, her mother had tossed her in the air, higher and higher until it felt like she'd hit tenth level if she stretched her arms high enough, and when she caught her, there had been that rush of _lovechildmineminemine_ that always emanated from her mother, the broken electronic burr the accompanying hymn of her childhood days. In those times, her father swept back the hair from her neck as he worked on her skin, needled in the data-points that she needed to traverse the city, the good days before the bilex had run out and left her this sad mess of spare parts without enough to update her drivers, her servers. She still hums under her skin, the sad song of a disused machine, all down her left arm. What is she now apart from a body to scavenge for obsolete possibilities? Why should she not stand still and let him steal from her what he had given?

 

He talks, not to her, but to the wriggling raw strip he's peeling from her bones. "Mr Montparnasse will be satisfied," he says, "an excellent sale indeed". Éponine knows the name. Mr Montparnasse, who has stolen the scanners from skulls, slid a heated plexi-glass cane between the slow thumping heart of a dowager circuit runner and her decayed ribs and watched her drop, then cheerfully stripped the very strands from her bones. Mr Montparnasse, who has rebuilt himself from the ground up, all runner skin and titanium teeth, a city's worth of hardware in that gleaming smile, who'll never be content with whatever he makes of himself.

 

Her father is selling her piece by piece, extraneous parts bought and sold, and she can't stop a burbled cry that chokes its way from her throat; before he wangles the chip out fully, she turns away and wrenches her arm from his grasp. "Stop moving," he says, and there's a cold presence behind her, a shadow comprised of chrome and teeth, Mr Montparnasse, only a couple of years older, but skin taut and stretched and polished over his adamant bones. He grasps her arm, and grins at her.

 

"Éponine," he says, and she holds still because he might just decide that he's not in the mood for buying but for taking. Her father finally wrestles the chip free with a brutal curse, and holds the delicate sliver high, thrusts Éponine aside, an endowment diminished, a stock matured and drawn down. Montparnasse takes the chip and examines it, sighs in pleasure as he places it in his purse. "Delicious, delicious," he says, a brutal happiness suffusing his voice. "You don't see chips made like that anymore,” and his fingers loosen on her arm. Before she can wriggle away, though, he extends a card. "I need this delivered," he says, "sixth level, sector 10, street woman by name of Calvin," and she takes it; her fingers turns it over curiously. She knows what it is.

 

"I don't do sixth level," she says stubbornly. "You know that." Sixth level security is tough. Éponine circuitruns with ease, is proud of what she does and what she knows, a pitiful knowledge clawed from her childhood, but she knows her limits as well. She can get in, can run the electric lines, but she'll be thrown out in minutes unless she’s blessed with more luck than she usually has.

 

"Yes, you can," he says, without reassurance but with certainty. "There's outcry on level eight, some preposterous rumours of a revolution." He flicks the words aside with scornful movements of his fingers; Montparnasse does not care for the movements of the upper levels, is concerned only with shaping his body and slicing his soul. "The resources are diverted to tracking the webdancers. You can slip in and out in no time at all, and be back in time for tea."

 

"Payment up front," she says, and her father grunts because he generally takes her payments, but she's keeping this one. Sixth level is a risk and she wants it. She needs this bilex.

 

Montparnasse sighs as though outraged at her request, but holds out his wrist and touches it to hers, transfers a bilex or five, enough for an uptune, and she holds her breath in hope. It's a pitiful savings balance that she has, but maybe it'll be enough. If she can catch Marius at one of the public exchanges and show him how well she connects… Well, a girl can dream. Marius and his eighth-level voice and ground-level shoes, and the way he sometimes absentmindedly looks through her as though he’s dreaming of something she’ll never understand.

 

It's an hour later and there are sirens in her ears as she flees sector ten, heart in her mouth and her feet barely touching the ground as she runs. _I told them_ , she thinks, like she could ever pass for a level six, even with her ident, and there's bitterness and frustration mixed in with the fear. If she's caught - she swallows the thought with sick dread. If she's caught, they'll pitch her off the railings and watch as she falls until she hits the next level, whatever is in the way. Or maybe they'll take her in and confiscate her chips, all the rest of the pitiful memory stored in her arm, strip out her ident because a ground-level gammon shouldn't have the tech to even pretend. Either way, she fears.

 

When the miracle happens, she isn't prepared. A featureless wall slides open, and a brown-haired girl peeps out and beckons at her. It's a trap, part of her mind thinks frantically, but her feet are already moving, because this is her only chance, and she barrels through the wall and watches it shimmer closed behind her. When she picks herself up from the ground, the other girl is staring at her with blatant curiosity as though she can't quite understand how Éponine has got here, even though she was the one that opened the way. "Why did you save me?" Éponine gasps, her breath hot in her lungs, and the girl shrugs.

 

"I felt the kind of fear I saw on your face once," she says quietly, in the cultured voice of a higher level. She's as slender as Éponine, though more from the fashion of the moment than through necessity, and dressed in clothes that are probably ten minutes out of date by now, a cloud of pink mist that swathes her, makes her look as though she's moving in a non-existent sunset. It's more delicate and fragile than anything Éponine has ever seen, but the girl herself is neither of those things; blue eyes levelly stare at her from under a square-cut brown fringe of hair, and she's assessing as she watches. "Come on," and she leads the way. Éponine doesn't steal things (often) but she can't help gazing around her in interest first at the plainness of the house, and then at the well-chosen ornaments.

 

"Do you live alone?" she asks, and the other girl shakes her head.

 

"Father lives here," she says, "but in the capsule apartment beside us. I can't convince him to sleep in this place. I'm not sure whether he dislikes it or just wishes to leave me space." She says nothing more but leads the way to what must be her bedroom, the bed as fluffy as her dress, and gestures to a chair. Éponine sits with her knees together and stares as much as the other girl. She should leave - this is dangerous in the extreme and she can't risk staying, but something keeps her here, more than caution. When the girl turns her head to stare at the flickering holoscape that serves as a window, the blue/white gleam of the expensive chip behind her ear catches Éponine’s eye. She notices two things immediately. One is that the girl will never be challenged as she walks and the second is that it isn’t a birth chip. She wasn’t chipped when she was born - from the positioning of the chip and the slight pucker of the skin around it it’s clear that it was done young, but not young enough to make it her birthright. Whoever this girl is, she wasn’t born to this, and insensibly Éponine relaxes at the thought. Not that it makes much difference. The other girl’s skin shines with the thin filaments of metal underneath it - pleasure points, access points. Everything that Éponine should have had is there. It makes her pitiful collection seem shabby and dull even to her eyes, her hard-won knowledge and clung to chips suddenly of no worth.

 

But there is no such echoing disdain in the other girl’s eyes; they flare bright and shining as they fix on Éponine. “You circuitrun on the free track?” she breathes, and Éponine nods stiffly.

 

“Yes,” she says cautiously, and notices again that though the other girl’s skin is tinged bright and rosy with the best tech money can buy, the pulse-gleams are not as bright as they should be. She doesn’t use what she has. “Don’t you?”

 

“My father wishes me not to. We live a very retired life here. I am allowed on the information tracks and the music, but he fears for me in the main free runs. So we remain in solitude and I talk to no-one, see no-one. Once a day we promenade to Luxury Shop.”

 

Éponine has never been to Luxury Shop, but she’s heard of it. It contains everything. Shops for anything your heart could desire, restaurants, promenades, walkways. And there - above your head, so far far above, there’s a square of open sky, fenced off by toughened glass, of course, but _there_. Éponine has never seen the sky. Almost everybody visits the Luxury Shop. If you’re a level three or four, you put on your best clothes and hold your head high as you get your pass for a visit, mix with the swells, turn up your nose at the gammons. Marius, who is chipped for most levels, occasionally wanders up there. He brought her back a piece of red ribbon once, an absent kindness that had made her cry and want to bruise her knuckles against the brushed steel of the capsule she and her family call home. Montparnasse, with his stolen chips and makeshift glamorous persona, regularly walks there, to call attention to himself. When Éponine makes it up to this level, she’s as silent as a thief in the night. Luxury Shop is too exposed, she is too obviously a fraud, it’s too much work. But for a second she can imagine the dullness, the loneliness of the other girl’s life. She can’t imagine not free-running, not brushing past a thousand other presences, scouting clues, whisking little bits of data away. She imagines being her, a universe underneath her skin and no way to use it.

 

“You should come with me,” she says on impulse, and kicks herself because why would she saddle herself with a spoilt little girl, even one who has saved her? But she wants to keep that spark of envy and use it to warm herself. Wants to prove that she’s more than a street gammon, and there’s something about the other girl that calls to her. Some tinge of recognition, as though they know each other, and Éponine is a creature of instinct at times. Besides, she can’t retract the offer, not with the flaming fierceness that has leapt into being.

 

“You mean it?” the girl says.

 

Éponine shrugs. “Yes,” she says. “Not here, of course. I can’t move around. But you can make your way down as far as second level, I’ll take you for a run. Payback - fair’s fair, yeah?”

 

“Fair,” the other girl breathes. “I’m Cosette, by the way.”

 

“Éponine,” Éponine responds automatically, and they swap ident numbers. Éponine’s ident is as false as most things in her life but she’ll get messages that are sent to it.

 

\--

The whole of the time she spends ducking back down to her own level she's alternately kicking herself and niggling at the name that hovers there in the back of her mind. _Cosette,_  her memory-cells sing back at her, _you know a Cosette, but from where?_  It makes her on edge and irritable, angry at her weakness for fairness, for balance, annoyed even at Marius, who may stroll anytime he pleases to walk the halls, and gaze at girls like Cosette to his heart’s content. Why do some have so much and others so little? She can't rid herself of the sight of solemn blue eyes and straight cut hair, of the delicate mobile beauty of the other girl, and she chews her own lip at the thought, at the throb of her heart. She's seen flicks like this. Wavering old vids of when two people from such different levels meet. Of what can happen.

 

She's embarrassed for herself at such thoughts, and her predilection for the unobtainable. She'll turn into her mother yet, yearning for a time that never existed, for things that could never happen, wasting away in hope. Mostly, she doesn't expect to ever hear from the other girl again.

 

So when the solitary ping of a private network touch impinges on her mere moments after she arrives, she's taken aback. In a way she's even more taken aback by the fact that she replies, and that by the same time the next cycle, so late that most people are asleep, or as many are at least as there are asleep at any time in this city, she's there to guide Cosette through the levels, down narrow walkways, through hidey-holes that only she (and half a million other gammons who like her seek to lose themselves) know. They pass downwards and Éponine does not ask how Cosette has evaded her guardian, whoever he may be - perhaps he sleeps heavily.

 

Éponine does not fear her world, though she may fear the people who inhabit it on occasion - it's her home, she barely remembers anything different at all, but looking at Cosette, she sees her level through her eyes, and flushes. The dirt - the bot-workers never make it down this far and the refuse collectors tasked with metal salvage strike all the time - is ineradicable, ground into the very walls. Cosette, with her scrubbed skin and elegant wrap, stands out as though she has a spotlight constantly on her. To her credit, though, she doesn't shudder or twitch her wrap aside when she walks through the crowd. When they reach the public exchange, she draws in one shuddering breath and holds still. Éponine takes pity on her and seizes a booth, squeezes them in together, pressed against the walls. Here is where people webdance and circuitrun fully. Properly chipped and attuned you can tap in anywhere, any place. It’s how Éponine can move between levels she ought not to be on - minute twists and changes to avoid the system, her fingers on the pulse of the electronic hum, regulating the heartbeat of the machine to stillness. But for full power, to absorb the city in one fell swoop, to meet as equals with anybody else the exchange is needed.

 

On the upper levels, there’s one per person, a booth in a house, though not in Cosette’s. Down here, they squeeze them in, a hundred at a time, kicking and squalling and shrilly shouting, jostling for their space in what should be an infinite resource. She thinks again of Montparnasse and his talk of a revolution on eighth-level and she knows who he means. They might be eighth-level children, but they plan down here on the ground, three to a booth, so much harder to trace, sharing their skill and their knowledge. She knows them, though they don’t know her, sees them duck in and out, shed the ground as they climb back up, and she couldn’t even say what they’re fighting for. She scrambles to survive from day to day, has no time to spare for their cause, even if in the abstract she approves that there is someone fighting against something, anything. Maybe if they win, they’ll fix the bot-system, remember what the ground needs. She doesn’t hold out much hope, though.

 

She rests a hand against the plain panel on the wall, and Cosette spreads her fingers and mimics her. Éponine, barely hesitating, shifts until their fingers touch and entwine. Body contact will help keep them together, an instinctive drawing closer of their minds when they’re out there. This is Cosette’s first time, after all. They fall forward together.

 

The first time out in the open is terrifying. Éponine knows this and unwillingly she bends to shelter Cosette, draws her aside and lets her watch them pass. Somewhere behind them, their bodies, lax and still, held up by the portion of them left behind, are waiting for them to return. Here they are intangible, invisible, connected to something greater than themselves, and Éponine longs to dissolve as usual, to disappear in the electrical impulses of half a million others around her. Here people talk and shout, and argue, and pop pills that send them screwing in hyperactive disaster. Here people work and play and talk, a life buzzing and remote, a million pockets. Cosette is unsteady, her hands and arms shine bright back home, and Éponine tuts and damps her down with a skilful touch.

 

_Hold onto me_

_Yes_

Cosette holds on, a thin tendril of thought hooked around Éponine’s questing, searching mind. She starts off slow, as slow as though she were on foot in the real world, tugs Cosette along with her, brushes past a thousand others. Once, daring - showing off a little, perhaps, intoxicated with knowing that she’s showing Cosette not merely the filth, the grime of her own little slice of the world, but the potential and possibilities inherent in what she can reveal - she swipes in and steals a little thread of data, a shuffling pack of cards in her hands. Information, desecration, data protection, insurrection, it streams past, a whirling cascade. Éponine can’t access it all, or even nearly it all. Her out-of-date armament, her decayed drivers limit her, but even so she can scoop in. Cosette, better equipped in every way but experience, shows signs of drifting into the inaccessible and Éponine reels her back, senses the flushed startled blush of her mind at this freedom.

 

The unravelling happens slowly enough that Éponine doesn’t notice at first, although she should have. She’s too busy watching a golden spark dash along the wire, followed by the darkened shadow-shape of the law, fits a name to the shape - Enjolras with two of his closest confidants - to notice that Cosette is fading to wisps beside her, every regular breath of her far-away lungs disintegrating her further. Éponine feels guilt slide through her. Cosette is unused to this. By her own admission, she has browsed the music track, spent her time there mostly, the limits of her own mind enough, connecting only to essentialities, not other minds. Unprotected, unsafeguarded, she’s beginning to fray, and unwillingly, unwittingly as Éponine puts her back together and retraces their steps, as she inches her far-away hand to the reunifier that’s only millimeters away, they join.

 

It’s an intimate shock, unlike anything Éponine has ever known. Her father’s fingers in her arm had not probed so deep, her mother’s silent yowl not pierced so well. They meld together for long slow demiseconds, minds tangling in each other, filaments catching, and this is why people don’t do this as a matter of course. It’s too much, too constant, a doubleset of emotions reflecting back on each other, and not only does she see Cosette - alone, lonely, wrapped in the love of a father and yet striving for the world, the dark past behind her that shadows her still - but Cosette sees her and in that moment there is, in that obscene twisting together of their minds, recognition, a heavy pulse-pulse in Éponine’s brain of _shameguiltIknowyou_ , before they slam back into their bodies, Éponine’s fingers on the reunifier still.

 

Cosette is whole again under her hands, and there are tears on her face, as though not merely her past but her present has found her now. Éponine doesn’t know what to do - she knows, she remembers who Cosette was and is and will be, a deeper tenderer touch of the minds than any she has ever allowed, any she has ever thought of - and all accidental. Cosette’s fingers trace the burning bright flesh of Éponine’s left arm, and Éponine cannot take her eyes off the brighter beam of the chip behind Cosette’s delicate ear.

  
She should be surprised when Cosette kisses her, the old way, mouth against mouth, slow and lingering as though she is attempting to recapture, in that second, the closeness they’d just achieved, that moment of union of understanding, before they have to leave this booth and emerge into the chill world outside, where what Éponine did and Cosette endured will have to be faced without the benefit of mitigation or the understanding of minds pressed together. Éponine isn’t surprised, though. She bends into the kiss, and closes her eyes to stop tears that are not her own from falling. One moment, she thinks. One moment for them.


End file.
